On the subject of sound quality, this is something I noticed almost immediately, it does have more volume, and seems to sound better, certainly when compared to my iPad 1, whether it's because the 3 now has a good sized rectangle area with a matrix of holes so the sound can get out more easily I don't know, in fact it's possible the iPad 2 also has them.. being same design shape, no idea, as I jumped from a 1 to the 3, but no complaints about sound loudness and quality here.
Another thing I noticed very quickly, was it's much faster at loading web pages than my ipad 1, no idea why, but most definately much faster over my gen 1 in that department. No idea how this compares to the iPad 2 which may be similar.
As for my thoughts on the screen, which is possibly why many current owners opted to buy it, well I think maybe I was expecting perhaps too much, as I feel a touch underwhelmed, maybe I was expecting something really super dupa...lol
Dont mis-understand me, the screen is very sharp indeed, especially for web browsing, but in fairness the previous ipad screens were infact pretty good anyway, when the 2 are placed side by side displayng the same images & text I can see the difference, it is better and sharper, but you wouldn't think the new iPad 3 had 4x as many pixels when you compare them, IOW it's not instantly obvious until you look closer, though the difference when you examine text with a magnifying glass the difference is instantly noticable (yes I know I'm sad.. I did use a magnifying glass)..lol
I have about 40 films ripped at 720x480 and they look very much the same to me, to be kind to the 3 though, & it may be wishful thinking on my part, they may look just a touch sharper, but I asked my wife which she thought looked the best and she picked the ipad 1... women eh..lol. This was for films/images from my iPad1 library.. IOW same files. So IMO yes they may just look a tad sharper... but..thats me..lol
The difference however is much more obvious when reading web pages and general text, it really is very much improved and quite noticable.
In conclusion, what I did try today was to rip a good bluray film and save it at the iPad 3's native res, and I can tell you, it looked pretty impressive indeed, and certainly better than the display on my HD TV with the same bluray film.
Only problem with that, is, I only have about a dozen Bluray films, and certainly don't want all those on my iPad, many of my favourite films are quite old now and are on standard DVD format, which when ripped I keep down to around 1 to 1.4gb in size with quite a few under 1gb, this is using WinX or with Aiseesoft DVD to iPad software.. both work well. The Bluray rip came in at over 2.5gb at native res, so although you would need to rip at higher res at same bps to see major differences in pic quality I'm still unsure if I'm willing to sacrifce that much memory to each film.
More than likely I'll compromise and probably settle for settings somewhere inbetween, but IMO the only way to really see big differences in the quality of films is to rip them from Blurays at, or close to bluray quality, and I can't see many doing that. ie. It takes much longer and eats into your memory.
In reality I suspect many ipad owners don't even rip films to maximise the quality of their current iPads 1 & 2.
I needed a second iPad as my wife is wanting my other iPad so gave me a valid reason to upgrade, but if one is thinking of ungrading simply for the sake of it, then the decision is more difficult, there is nothing wrong with either the original iPad 1 or the later 2, and if your expecting miracles from the iPad 3, though you won't be disappointed, but you may wonder if it was worth paying out all that cash to do so... why did I.?.. simple, AIS I needed 2nd one, and at 68yrs of age probably have more money than sense..lol
Sorry for turning this into a book.. just the ramblings of someone well past his prime..lol
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